The Trump-as-racist narrative holds sway in mainstream circles, but reality on the ground tells a different story about which demographics support the Trump campaign.
Recently I was discussing the 2016 election with a group of curious, politically-interested thinkers, and the topic came up about how a rapidly changing America might affect voters later this year. Specifically, the conversation focused on this thought-provoking piece by Joel Kotkin in RealClearPolitics.
To summarize the article and the data on which it is based, large segments of the American population are leaving the coastal mega-cities and moving to smaller, mid-tier markets and suburban areas outside of dense population centers. The trend is consistent across racial lines and is most prevalent among families with children. Primary motivators of this migration seem to be increasing costs of housing and, perhaps more importantly, the inhospitability of urban areas to raising families. While the deeper, more important headline from these findings might be the accelerating breakdown of America between singles and families, there is a secondary, red meat story around the impact such demographic changes will have on the current political divide.
There is no telling how political ideologies will change moving forward, but one thing we can be sure of is that they will change. Today’s Republicans and Democrats are very different from their respective parties of a generation ago. So as demographic patterns and new prevailing attitudes emerge, so will the orientation of the parties. Like him or not, Trump might be an early indicator of what’s to come, if not in form at least in function.
Strange bedfellows
Despite the utter revulsion coming from the republican establishment and the intellectual left, Trump’s message is resonating with more unconventional population segments than the media is willing to give him credit for. The standard line is that only xenophobes and uneducated, working class whites have rallied to his cause. But reality often betrays the narrative.
For example, my wife (a legal U.S. resident) runs with a crowd of immigrants, most of them Latino but some from other regions of the world. It is shocking how many like if not outright support Trump. Much of this may be simply because they are legal immigrants and resent line jumpers. But I think some of it is more symbolic. These people are hard workers who came to the U.S. to pursue opportunity. In many cases they understand all too well the nature of oligarchy rule, corrupt leaders, weak government institutions and the breakdown of a justice system. They’ve seen it back home. So they are in a better position than most native born Americans to recognize a failure of leadership. Trump directly confronts that failure.
Of course, it is difficult to find any credible surveys of legal immigrants, and therefore virtually impossible to know if there is widespread sentiment in legal immigrant communities that corresponds to Trump’s views. But there is ample data showing that a majority of legal immigrants support immigration reform. And it is difficult to argue that immigration reform is the centerpiece of Trump’s rise to legitimacy as a candidate.
All of this is not to excuse the man’s rhetoric. Some of his more populist comments have been clearly (maybe shrewdly?) intended to rile up resentment among the disgruntled classes. And it is no secret that organizations with racist and white supremacist connections are throwing their support behind him. While it isn’t fair to criticize him for receiving their support — like it or not, bigots still get to vote — his more direct appeals to these unsavory characters reflect a low form of pandering. But much of this support is incidental. It just so happens that nationwide, and for a variety of reasons too numerous to discuss here, many of the people who respond to Trump’s populism are nostalgic working class white people. Just not all of them.
While it’s become chic to chalk up their anger to an inability to deal with the changing diversity of America and the first black president, this kind of condescending armchair analysis wholly misses the more important takeaway here — these disenfrachised masses come from both sides of party lines. Let’s pause and think about this for a second. Of the enormous slew of presidential candidates both Republican and Democrat, there is no single figure with more bipartisan appeal than Donald Trump. Is it any wonder then that he is detested so thoroughly by the leading figures of both parties?
A silent majority?
So this is where we tie together the concept of demographic changes and a post-partisan America. The Trump coalition appears to encompass an odd assemblage of the working class, legal immigrants (remember that we naturalize about 700k people per year!), tea party conservatives, celebrities and Hollyweirdos, as well as the racists and xenophobes that the mainstream media love to talk about. Given his status as a New York real estate mogul and past flirtation with the Democratic party, it is safe to assume that Trump also enjoys unknown but significant support among the left-leaning. This would explain the exception Trump took to a recent move by the Virginia GOP to require that only republicans vote in the state’s upcoming primary (controlling who votes has been a tactic of the right, but I digress).
This colorful mix of voter segments is diverse enough on its own, but it may only scratch the surface of the true depth of Trump’s patronage. A credible recent report by research firm Morning Consult shows that many people refuse to admit their support for Trump in public polling due to shame. Interesting. If proved to be true, what might the effect be in a national election with a secret ballot box? Regardless, when taken together, Trump’s following represents a large and diverse mix of people and viewpoints. While it might not look like enough to win the presidency at this moment, it could look a lot bigger at some point in the future. Opponents should view it as a rag tag group of racists at their own peril.
A critical motivation unifying those who have gotten behind Trump’s campaign may be less a frustration with the collapse of the white man’s paradigm, and more an exhaustion with the very rules of partisan engagement that have dominated the affairs of an unpopular federal government. As the aforementioned demographic changes show, most Americans are looking for jobs, a low cost of living, safe neighborhoods and good schools. They care more for solving problems than they do for party ideologies, and these preferences are increasingly bound to show up in who they vote for. Trump might not be the right person to solve these problems, but he is A) talking about them and B) not tied to their perceived underlying causes, i.e. our current government.
The truth is that American leadership at home and abroad is at a low point of the past 100 years (and has been trending downward for at least 15 years now). Economic polarization and social division in America are a direct reflection of the rhetoric of our current leadership. Obama’s overtly political behavior and failure to enact oft-promised change (other than what was forced through a Congressional supermajority in the first year of his presidency) are a product of the times and, contrary to some media hot takes, a relatively new development in American politics. Consider, for example, the fact that even a president as divisive as Richard Nixon was able to sign massive bipartisan legislation such as the Clean Air Act. But another harsh truth is that Obama’s presidency is the natural reaction to the leadership decisions of a catastrophically flawed Bush administration. Bush started this shit. Obama doubled down.
Something bigger than Trump
People aren’t stupid. They see that the fighting and corruption are not working. Trump comes in the guise of a outrageous P.T. Barnum-type character, but underneath the bluster, his appeal is pretty simple and summed up in his “Make America Great Again” tag-line. No matter how many liberal newspaper articles try to tell us that America is still great and getting better, people see through it. No matter how many conservative outlets tell us that Trump’s populism comes from a place of hate, people aren’t buying. Not because they are racist, uneducated or jobless (though many may be) but because they realize neither party is serving the country’s best interests.
While the world is getting better everyday with innovative new technologies, medical advances and global commerce bringing millions out of poverty, things are getting irrefutably worse in terms of how well the U.S. government serves its constituents. Most Americans still enjoy key advantages in terms of access to comfortable housing, food, and wonderful commercial products, but that which is left up to the government to provide is lacking. Fading infrastructure, shoddy transportation, silly wars, porous borders, police overreach, a massive prison culture, and gross lapses in domestic security are the fruits of government inadequacy. Most average people couldn’t name a recent government success if they tried.
Trump’s entire campaign revolves around this idea. And that’s what has given him a chance. Even if he fails to win elected office, it would not be surprising if someone more polished emerges next time around and gives America what it is coming closer to realizing it wants — a new political spectrum. Whether any of it is good or bad for the long term hopes of the country, I have no idea. But it is clear that something different is coming.